Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Postcard

Did it arrive, then?
I sent you my youth, my song
of the summer's way
with the white gold hair
sunshine gave me in those days.
God's bead of grace acts
exactly like sweat
running down my sacred form.
That's why my soft edge
tastes so much like rain.

October 15, 2010 9:31 PM

The poem is of a postcard and so is the image. Of course the subject discussed by Lovecraft et al. is not the poem. I just like having H.P.'s penmanship on my blog.

Oddly, my grandfather on my Mother's side was nicknamed H.P. also. He was a Dutchman named Hartog Philippus, a family name. I have seen a list of ancestors and those two names appear often in this order and in the reverse.

There was an H.P. who was sent to Auschwitz in World War II as well, not my grandfather. That is about the Jewish side of the family of course. The family has Jews and Christians both, with the Jews being the older part of the lineage. An ancestor came to Holland back in the days of the Inquisition, coming from Portugal. My Grandfather did not like the Catholic Church for a very good reason. The Inquisition killed some of us. He hated Nazis even more for the same reason.

5 comments:

Also "Pa" as he was known in the family was a Mason. The Catholic Church has been on record against the Masons also. That didn't help my grandfather to be well disposed toward the Catholic Church on this account either. Also, the Catholic Church did a politically expedient thing concerning the Axis Powers during World War II. Holy Cow. How could my Grandfather H.P. Noordwal be anything other than vehemently anti-Catholic?

You're right. It's a fabulous poem! You are always so concise and yet I am not left wanting. It's like an amuse bouche! Sometimes the bulk of what we send, never translates. I pray youth made it intact!

There is something about how the images are in this one. I can't make this happen. Shit. I mean there is no way to do it again just this way. There is something else here that is not me. Otherwise I would do it over and over. Instead, I substitute clever. It's almost enough.

I could goAnywhereAnywhen And be thereWith youWe could sendPostcards from RomeWe could summerIn Austria If only time wasOur friendIf only you wereIf only you were thereWith meThen it would truly beWe couldIf only you wouldWe could hitchhike from Switzerland to Bavaria andBack againSend a postFrom the south of FranceOr the north of spainWe could

The View From The Northern Wall

Some years ago my poetry took on a mythic flavor and I became a character in my own poems, a mage, "the man of the Northern Wall". This apellation is not completely fictional. My middle name is Noordwal, a Dutch term for north wall, though in current Dutch it mainly means north bank as in riverbank. I was told that an ancestor, a Portugese Jew escaping the Inquisition, settled in a small Dutch town and took this name from where he settled, near the north wall of the town. I have thought for a long time that -wal meant wall, think my mother told me that. A linguist might say that my usage is no longer common, is an older usage, but then the Inquisition happened in Portugal a few centuries ago, right around the time the Moors lost control of the Iberian Peninsula and the Jews lost the modest protection given them by Islam. Now I write as this mage, my poetry persona.